Recipes & Cooking

Running

Sweet Sixteen

I planned a two-pronged attack on the sixteen miler this morning. The first was to get up with enough time to allow a full hour between eating breakfast and running. I got up at 5:30 and had my coffee, and then made oatmeal with some cocoa powder, almond butter, and a little honey, and chased it with a banana and berry smoothie with some chia gel thrown in for good measure. (A little Tarahumara mojo couldn’t hurt.) Breakfast, check.

Prong two was a little more difficult, but basically boiled down to really trying to enjoy the run. It occurred to me this morning that tackling four 4-milers didn’t really sound that bad, so I decided to approach it as such. I really tried to relax into it, not worry about pace too much, and enjoy the scenery. The miraculous thing is that it actually worked. Somewhere around mile 12 I started feeling the fatigue in my legs, but the workout itself didn’t seem grueling at all. I guess it should have been obvious all along, but I realized that stressing over every little thing for the duration of a long run was completely exhausting in itself. I’m sure I’ll have to continue to work at relaxing on the run, but this was a good reminder to just sit back and let it flow.

On a more practical note, I tried Power Bar’s energy gels today. I’ve been largely using Clif Gels for the past few years, but I decided to give the Power Gel’s a shot since they offer more options without caffeine. The Power Gels are slightly larger than most of the other brands, so they require a bit more pouch or pocket space, but the upside is that they are far less viscous than the others. The extra liquid helped them go down more easily, and I didn’t feel like I was left with raspberry paste coating my mouth for two miles. I’ll definitely be stocking up on these this fall.

It was a good day, all around. And now, in the spirit of Paula Radcliffe, I will be going to be at 9:30.